Kumihimo Marudai

Japanese Braiding Stands

Explanation

"Kumihimo" is the Japanese style of braiding fibers into cords.
It basically consists of arranging threads on a braiding loom,
then moving the threads in patterns.
There are a few different kinds of looms,
but the easiest to make
(hence the easiest to own and use)
is called a "marudai".
A marudai is basically a round stool with a hole in the middle.
Weighted bobbins of thread hang down around the round surface,
and braid together at the hole.
The completed braid passes down through the center.

I got curious about this style of braiding
because I've needed cords for many of my Japanese projects
and had to settle for whatever they have at the fabric store.
I tried out a simple braid using a CD as a marudai,
and it came out awful enough that I decided to make a real one.

This one is made from a couple of pieces of scrap wood
from the basement, a few pieces of dowel, and some screws.
It's finished with a water based polyurethane/acrylic,
and not stained or decorated in any way.
It's about 2 feet tall,
and the circle is 8 inches across with
a 1 inch hole in the center.

The square "base" of this marudai also has a hole in it,
and can also be used as a braiding surface if you invert the loom.
This is supposedly better for braids that finish up flat instead
of round since it helps keep the edge threads separate from the
surface threads. My experiences have not been favorable. I find
that it pushes all the threads to the center of each side, while
on the circular surface he threads stay where you put them. Any
future marudai I make probably won't have the hole in the square
part, though a square base is traditional.

Once I made the first marudai and started getting into
braiding, Sharon wanted to try it out, too, so I made a
second one. The second one is about the same height, but
it has an eleven inch top and only three legs. The larger top
will help if I do any more braids with a large thread count.

Instead of making this marudai reversible,
the square part is just a base.
I tried out the "Roman Ogee" bit in my router
to give it a nice decorative edge, though.
I also sunk the screw heads,
and covered them with plugs.
It makes the top really nice, and smooth.

I also made this somewhat smaller marudai that can be disassembled.
It's meant to be easier to travel with, if necessary.
Not only is the head of the marudai a little smaller (about ten inches)
than the second marudai, the legs are much shorter (about 15 inches).
The legs also end in #10 hanger bolts.
The bolts screw into brass inserts in the underside of the top,
and poke through holse in the base
where they are secured from beneath with wing nuts.
When it's all put together you can't really tell
it's not permanently assembled.
The short height makes it easier to use
if you're sitting or kneeling on the floor,
or if the marudai is sitting on a tall table.
I'm also planning to make a few extra sets of legs,
so it's adjustable!

I was getting tired of apologizing for the sorry materials
of my first three marudai, so I decided to make a nicer one.
I went to the hardware store and bought some nicer wood
(selecting the flattest piece I could find), and wound up
with this furniture-grade item. It's the first marudai I've
made for which I could justify charging what I've seen other
marudai selling for.

It has a mirror 11" across and a center hole 1.5" across.
The legs are about 23" tall and an inch in diameter.

Once I started talking to people about kumihimo,
I started getting two questions fairly often:
"Have you thought about teaching classes?"
and
"Have you thought about making marudai to sell?"
Being able to say "Yes" to both questions
means having more marudai,
so I embarked on a program of
making more marudai.
Lots more marudai.

For the first batch,
I made four,
to see if the batch production thing would even work for me.
Two of them came out nice,
but two of them came out
not as nice.
I decided that the nicer ones would be for sale,
and the not-as-nice ones would be "student marudai".
They're all usable,
and some of the flaws are minor,
so this seemed like a good plan.

Since my success rate appeared to be 50%,
I realized that if I wanted to be able to teach
up to six students at a time,
I'd need to make eight more marudai.
Making eight marudai all at once was quite a production,
but now I have a big pile of them.
I can sell a few to cover costs,
and still have enough to teach classes.

These marudai are all about 16 inches tall,
with mirrors that are 11 inches across.
All edges are rounded and all surfaces are smoothed and finished.

It's a roughly 24" tall marudai made entirely of poplar,
with a linseed oil finish. It also has the same hardware as
marudai #3,
so it can be taken apart for travel.
I managed to find a poplar board with some great grain in it,
and the angles around the
hole and
base
edges do wonderful
things with that grain.
The oil finish is great.
I also tried using a router to cut the circle and bevel the hole,
which worked pretty well.

I made this marudai on November 2009,
and gave it to my wife as a present.

More Marudai

Materials

Marudai #1 & #2

The wood for the top and bottom is just pine,
cut from some scrap 1x12 I had in the basement.
The dowels are 7/8" poplar dowels,
chosen because poplar is cheaper than oak,
and they were out of 1" dowels.

The screws are square-drive #8x1.5" wood screws.
The finish is a base coat of Olympic water based
sanding sealer followed by two coats of Minwax
water based polycrylic finish.

The rubber band in the above picture serves no
purpose besides marking the vertical center of the marudai,
which is useful for estimating the length of working threads
and completed braids.

Marudai #3

With the exception of the attachment hardware I used to
make this marudai portable, all the materials are the same
as the other two marudai.
The legs are made from a single 1"x48" hardwood dowel.
The attachment hardware is all brass.
I used
#10x24x1.5" brass hanger bolts,
#10 brass washers,
and #10x24 wing nuts.
The only place I can find
the brass inserts is
in those drawer thingies at Lowe's.
The hanger bolts and wing nuts come from Home Depot.

Marudai #4

The nicer marudai is made from poplar 1x12 and poplar dowels.
It is stained with a water-based "rosewood" stain,
and finished with a gloss polyurethane.
The legs are attached to the bottom with screws,
but the top is simply glued on
to obviate screw holes in the top.

Marudai Batches #1 and #2

The tops and bottoms of
all twelve of these marudai are made from
the absolute flatest pine stock I could find.
The legs are 7/8" poplar dowel.
The marudai are assembled with no screws or other hardware,
instead each dowel is seating and glued into a half-inch deep socket.
All surfaces were sealed, sanded and finished.
The finish is a water-based polurethane that should keep
the surface smooth and easily cleanable.

Marudai

As mentioned above, this marudai is made of poplar
with a linseed oil finish.
I removed the hardware from marudai #3 to make this one,
since marudai #3 was pretty warped.

Tama

My bobbins (called "tama" in Japanese) are common
embroidery bobbins of the kind that often come free with a
big package of embroidery floss. Each is weighted with a
metal (not lead) fishing weight through which I have strung
a hook made of "safety wire".
Most of my weights are 3/4 ounce weights,
though some of the earlier weights I bought were 1 ounce.

Tama are supposed to be weighted wooden spools,
but those are quite expensive and usually need to be mail ordered.
The 3/4 ounce fishing weights are 4 for $1.50.
Making the wire hooks took a bit of time,
but the hooks are also useful to securing the thread
to keep it from unwinding.

Somebody eventually did buy me real tama as a gift.
It was a tremendous gift!
The traditional tama are much heavier,
at about the 3 ounce mark,
and have introduced a new texture to my braiding.

I've also created a couple sets of wooden tama.
These are shaped from 1.5" poplar dowel using either
a 5/8" round router bit (for the first set of 8),
or a 3/4" sanding drum (for the second set of 16).
The first set is filled with short lengths of steel rod
to bring the weight of each tama up to about 1.6 ounces.
The second set is weighted with stacks of copper pennies
to bring the weight of each tama up to about 2.1 ounces.
While the cost of materials is very low
(about $0.20 worth of dowel and $0.15 worth of pennies),
making these is labor intensive so I can see why
most online stores charge about as much for eight tama
as they do for a marudai.

Fiber

When I was getting started, I bought a big multi-color pack
of cotton embroidery floss at the fabric store. This is the
same stuff you'd probably buy a teenager for making friendship
bracelets. A pack of 36 skeins (8.75 yards each) was $5.
This stuff isn't fancy, but I wasn't sure how well this whole
hobby would go, so I didn't want to invest in some nice silk
floss until I got some experience.

So far, this has been a good idea.
The variety has forced me to experiment with combinaions
I might otherwise have neglected.
I'm not upset if I have to throw some floss away.
The braids come out pretty nice anyway.
The fact that I have plenty of floss available
encourages me to keep going and try new braiding patterns.
I recommend this route for beginners.

Later, I branched out into yarns.
You can get silk yarns, or just braid with anything.
Thicker yarns are a great way to make thicker braids
without increasing the complexity of the braid.

I've also tried braiding with nylon rope for strength,
and strands of beads for beauty.
More on those, below.

The Process

Making the Marudai

First, I cut the circle and square pieces from scrap lumber.
Then, I drilled the holes in the center of each piece,
and the screw pilots (with countersinks) for the legs.
I edged the pieces top and bottom with a 3/8" roundover
bit in the router to remove sharp edges that might catch threads.
Finally, I sanded, sealed, sanded, and finished the surfaces.
Finishing was easier with screws through the holes,
since I could hold the screws while finishing one side,
and use the screws to support the piece while I finished the other.

I started with two ~48" dowels,
cut them in half to make four legs,
then sanded the legs smooth.
Then, I drilled pilot holes for screws in each end,
and put screws in them.
This enabled me to support the legs between two sawhorses
by resting the screws on the sawhorse tops.
This enabled me to finish the whole dowel at once,
while keeping the things level while they dried.
Again, each was sanded, sealed, sanded, and finished.

Once all the pieces were pre-finished,
I assembled each marudai by driving screws through the tops
and bottoms into the ends of the legs.
The marudai were then sanded again and given a final coat of finish.
If I didn't like the smoothness of the top,
I wet-sanded just the top with ultra-fine paper
and gave it one more coat of finish with a high quality brush.

For many of the later marudai,
instead of using screws to attach the legs,
I drilled sockets in the underside of the top
and the upper surface of the base,
and glued the legs into these sockets.
This leaves the top surface of the marudai much
smoother without having to plug screw holes.

Making the Tama

The simplest way to make wooden tama is to start with some
dowel that is already 1.5 inches in diameter and then
carve a 1/4 inch deep channel all the way around the outside.
The ways I can think of to cut this channel are:

Turn the dowel on a lathe.

Cut the channel using a round-bottom router bit.

Grind out the channel using a sanding drum.

I have used the second and third methods.
For all of these, it's probably easiest and safest to cut
the channel first starting 3/8" in from the end of the dowel,
then cut 1.5" chunks off the end of the dowel.
I found that using a 3/4" coarse sanding drum on my drill press
was the safest and easiest way to go.

Once the chunks are cut,
drill a hole most of the way down the axis of each.
Fill this hole with something weighty.
I found that copper pennies in a 3/4" hole add the
right amount of weight with the least amount of work.
Fourteen or fifteen pennies will make a roughly
2 ounce tama.

Once the tama are weighted,
plug the hole to keep the weight in.
For best results, use a dowel of the same wood
that you used for the body of the tama.
Plug the hole, then cut the dowel off flush with the surface.

Finally, sand each tama as smooth as possible.
Round off all the edges and smooth out all of the surfaces,
especially the curves on the inside of the channels.

Using the Marudai

One thing you have to understand about kumihimo is
that it is not actually very difficult.
You set up the threads in a particular way,
then you execute the braiding pattern repeatedly
until you run out of thread or decide to stop.
Here's some video of me executing an 8 strand "Edo Yatsu"
pattern with yellow and black threads

You can see that every time a thread is moved,
it crosses over one or more other threads.
As new crossings occur,
they push old crossings to the center
and create the braid.
You don't move the threads into place by hand,
you just move the threads and the braid sort of
"happens" at the center of the hole.
The finished braid is weighted,
so as it gets longer it is pulled down into the hole.
Here's a picture of the "active site"
of a 12 strand flat braid:

Kumihimo Projects

Just to see if I could do this at all,
I tried a simple, flat braid using a CD as a marudai.
It came out awful and uneven,
but was close enough to an actual braid
to convince me that I could actually do this craft,
and that with better equipment I might get better results.

This braid uses a 12 strand pattern that's
similar to the 8 strand "Hira Kara Gumi" pattern.
It takes six executions of the plaiting pattern for this braid
to complete one repeat of the visual pattern and return the strands to
their starting positions.
Each repeat covers about a half inch of completed braid.
So, to complete a foot of braid,
you have to execute the pattern 144 times.
I made approximately 6.35 feet of braid,
meaning I did the pattern about 915 times
(over the course of several days).
I'm sure my friends who knit and crochet are snickering
at my shock over that number, but my reaction is "Gah!".

This braid wound up replacing the store-bought cord
on my drinking gourd.

I decided to take a big step backwards here.
How crazy was I to jump right in with a 12 strand braid
for my first serious braid?
Unused to complexity,
I lost track of the threads a couple times,
so the pattern actually changes over the course of the braid.
It came out OK,
but I now realize it was kind of silly.
The result of that realization was the decision to make
this 4 strand, 2 color braid.
This braid is super boring after the complexity
of the 12-strand, but it introduces some important theory.
Plus, it's so long that it introduces the braider to
how much time needs to be devoted to this hobby
and builds up the arm muscles.

Starting to work my way back up the ladder,
I made this 8-strand braid using the "Edo Yatsu"
braiding pattern.
This braid has different results depending on the
placement of colors when you start.
I started with a "YY KK YY KK" pattern,
which yielded this pleasing spiral.
I used it to string an inro.

Although this color pattern makes the braid
look like a twist-style rope,
it is not.
If you twirl it in your fingers,
it does not separate into strands like a rope does.

I decided that I had worked my way back up the ladder,
so it was time for this 16 thread "Kongo Gumi" pattern.
I thought this was going to be difficult,
given the number of strands,
but it's actually a very simple pattern.
All threads move in the same direction,
and you're basically just moving the end pair of threads each time.
There is no
"grabbing the middle pair out four and moving them in opposite directions"
like with some patterns.

This pattern also moves very quickly.
I timed myself at one point,
and determined that I can complete 18 inches of it in one hour.
This means that this entire braid was completed in about
five and a quarter hours,
though those hours were spread across about five days.

I really like the way the colors came out on this one.
The colors variations within the spiralling bands
seem to give this braid an irridescent quality,
even though it's made of mundane cotton floss.

Braid failure!
I really wanted to try out this "Yatsu Rai" pattern,
because I think the interlocked S pattern it produces is really cool.
I discovered, however, after about eight inches of braid,
that you really should be mostly sober while braiding.
I lost track of the braid at some point
and was unable to recover.
Eventually I just put the threads into starting position
and began again, figuring there would be a discontinuity,
but the overall braid woul be fine.
For some reason the restarted braid was not as clear or neat
as the original portion, so I gave up.

The upper half of the braid, starting from the looped end,
is the good part. See how clear and tight the pattern is?
About three repetitons after the fold, you can see where the
error starts, and there are a couple of sections where the
apttern is messed up and I am trying to recover.
Eventually, the pattern picks back up,
but it's stretched out and indistinct.
I don't understand why that is,
but it wasn't worth continuing.
Maybe I'll try this pattern again when I have more
time and attention to devote to it.

Went a little overboard today.
First of all,
I went to
a local store
that specializes in natural fiber yarns
and I bought two balls of 100% silk yarn.
(It was on sale, honest!)
Then, I spent 3.5 hours straight making this braid,
starting at 10pm.
Yes, it was a wild Saturday night!

Braiding with with big thick yarn was very interesting.
It seemed to go much faster than braiding with skinny
embroidery floss.
The final braid is thicker than the 8 strand braid #3 above,
though not quote as thick as the 16 strand braid #4.
This silk is excellent.
In addition to having great color,
it's super-soft and very squishy.
The resulting braid is noticably stretchy.
I'm going to want to make more braids with this stuff,
which is good because I have yards and yards and yards of it.
It might also be fun to mix it with thinner floss.

This was pretty much an experimental braid.
I was trying to achieve a braid that integrated a
black & gold pattern and a red &amp white pattern.
Black and gold are the colors of the Pittsburgh area
and the SCA Barony that covers it.
Red and white are the colors of Aethelmearc,
the SCA Kingdom.
I decided to try the "yatsu rai" pattern again,
making the S-shaped blocks in my two color combos.
That pattern is visible in the top part of the image.

Unfortunately, that pattern didn't work out so well.
The colors made it impossible to see the pattern,
and the pattern made it difficult to see
which colors were grouped together.
So, I changed the arrangement of the threads and tried again.
By changing the combination to
black & red with yellow & white,
I hoped to conquer the problem.
The resulting pattern was much more pleasing
(see the middle of the photo),
but not really what I was going for.

Then, I did it.
The bottom part of the photo show clear blocks of
black & gold and red &amp white,
but the overall pattern is very integrated.
The dark & light lengthwise stripes in this braid
are also clear.

This braid was fun to make,
with all the experimentation,
but with the switches
and all the transition periods in between where I was trying to
figure out how to arrange the threads to get a particular pattern,
it's not very attractive.
I even split the combos down near the end to make
two 4 strand braids in each combo, just for fun.
This all was great,
and now I know how to do the pattern I want,
but it's not very useful on its own.

Once I finished up the exrimental braid,
I was able to get back to the great silk yarn.
Instead of experimenting within a single long braid,
I decided to do a handful of smaller braids to
find my favorite two-color version of the Edo Yatsu.

This "houndstooth check" pattern was the first result,
the thread arrangement for this can be described as
"XO XX OX OO".
That is, if X is gray and O is blue,
the #1 thread at roughly 11:30 o'clock is gray,
the #2 thread at roughly 12:30 o'clock is blue,
the #3 thread at roughly 2:30 o'clock is gray,
the #4 thread at roughly 3:30 o'clock is gray,
the #5 thread at roughly 5:30 o'clock is blue,
the #6 thread at roughly 6:30 o'clock is gray,
the #7 thread at roughly 8:30 o'clock is blue, and
the #8 thread at roughly 9:30 o'clock is blue.
Odd number threads are moving clockwise,
and even number threads are moving counter-clockwise.
Maybe that doesn't all make sense to you,
but in the future I'll only give the X&O pattern.

A step back towards simplicity with this
"OX OX OX OX" threaded
"Checker" Edo Yatsu.
Grey moves clockwise
while blue moves counter-clockwise.
I call this checker,
but you could also view this as lengthwsie
alternating stripes.

I've decided to do as many of these
two-color variations of Edo Yatsu as I can think of.
I'm not enough of a math person to calculate
exactly how many there are.
There are not strictly 28,
since there are always going to be 4 X's and 4 O's,
plus there's a certain amount of rotational symmetry.
For instance,
"XX XX OO OO" is probably the same as
"OO OO XX XX".
There's some software that would help me experiment with this,
but so far I prefer to noodle on it myself.

I might wind up having to do this one again,
since there are a couple of errors in it.

I've done this "OO XX OO XX" spiral pattern before,
for Braid #3.
It's nice to see it in these colors, though.
It also marks the last variation that I have a diagram for.
The three I've done so far are shown on one of the many
kumihimo web pages I've been reading over the past few weeks.
All the ons you will see below are ones I've come up with
on my own and decided to try out.
That's not to say I'm the first to have ever done them,
I mean people have been doing kumihimo for a long time,
but I'm trying to work out variations for myself,
as a way of understanding the structure a little more.

Oops, I accidentally made this one twice as long as the others.
I was wondering why it was taking so long to finish.
Anyway, it uses a "XO XX XO OO" thread pattern,
which creates a kind of Greek Key design that spirals down the braid.
I think it's really cool.
If you look at the pattern,
you can see it's very similar
to both the spiral pattern of Braid #10
and the checker pattern of Braid #9.
This interlacement is mirrored in the design that is produced.
The spiral pattern's odd and even bands are replaced with
alternating "dotted" and "dashed" lines.
Cool.

Anyway, I immediately cut this braid in half
to create one braid that matches the others in length
and an extra braid.
This also involved unbraiding am inch or so from the end
of each smaller braid to tassels.
That's the first time I've ever had to unravel any of this
fancy braiding after it's off the marudai.
I had to get al this cutting and unravelling done quickly,
before I lost my nerve.

I was trying to make a braid with block of each color
but it turns out that just looks like houndstooth check.
It's basically the mirror image of braid #8,
which I think is very strange.
It's not what I was expecting at all.
I started with an "XX XX OO OO" pattern,
which I thought would give me something very different
from what I actually got.
I guess I still don't understand this as well as I want to.
Oh well, that just means I have to keep trying.

The braid did come out nice and smooth,
so I guess I shouldn't complain too loudly.

I decided to take a break from all this round braid,
and try out a flat braid with this great yarn before I used
it all up on other things. This braid is a Yatsu Rai plait
with an "XO XO XO XO" thread pattern. It's super-stretchy.
This would make a great tie for something that needs a
bit of elasticity.
It's about three quarters of an inch wide,
so it would make a great strap for tying a box shut
or maybe as a shoulder strap for something.

If I manage to get more of these colors,
I should try this braid again with a the thread pattern
that yields the S braid. Something tells me that would
look really really great.

Back to the round braid,
but this is the very last braid using the
blue and grey silk yarn.
Not bad, eight braids from two skeins of yarn,
over 29 feet of braid.
I paid less than $30 for the silk,
so less than a dollar a foot for materials
and I've seen braids selling for ten dollars a foot on Etsy.
If I can ever bring myself to sell braids,
this might be a pretty lucrative hobby.

This particular braid uses the
eight thread Edo Yatsu pattern again,
this time with an "OO OX XO XX" thread pattern
that gives a great "Interlocking E" spiral
that I really like.
I think this is my favorite pattern visually so far,
and the fact that I figured it out myself
instead of just following somebody's web page
makes it extra-special to me.

One of the reasons I started doing kumihimo was to occupy
the "down time" at day long (or longer) SCA events. I completed
this entire braid during the Amethyst Invitational Tournament;
setting up the threads during breakfast and tying everything
off during court. It's a Yatsu Rai "S Braid", which uses a
"XO OO OX XX" thread pattern. I used silk yarn from the knitting
store. The white yarn is glossier and thicker than the black,
which gives this braid an interesting texture. I decided to use
this braid as a chin strap for my sando gasa hat.

While making the previous braid at an SCA event,
I noticed that kingdoms and baronies often give out
awards that are sometimes referred to as "danglies",
that is, they are represented by a badge or medallion
that hangs from a cord. It occurred to me that maybe
making some cords in the baronial colors, and giving
them to the barony for use with baronial awards would
be a way to put my apparent obsession to good use.

So, here's the result. I used eight full skeins of
cotton embroidery thread, according to a thread pattern
of my own design which I wil refer to as the "Barony
Braid". I did this as one long Edo Yatsu braid with
thread pattern "YY KK KY KK". Once it was complete,
I cut it into six award cords and whipped the ends into
tassels. This meant that almost a foot of braiding was
combed out. Now I know better. Anyway, I will give these
cords to the Baron and Baroness when I next see them and
I'm sure they will go to good use.

I liked the new chin strap on my sando gasa so much that I
decided to get rid of the store-bought braid I was using for
the harness and do it entirely in silk braid. I used the same
two silk yarns as braid 15, four black and four white.
Most of this braid is Yatsu Rai S braid in a "XO OO OX XX"
pattern, but the ends of each section are split into
black and white Maru Yotsu sections to create ties for attaching
the harness to the support basket, and the pieces of the harness
to each other.

These "break out" sections were fun and challenging.
I basically had to do two braids at the same time on a single marudai.
Once the braid was complete, I tied off the aplit sections and cut
the braid into three pieces to make the harness.
So far, it's working very well.

Once that braid was long enough, though, I still had a bunch
of yarn left on my bobbins. I basically spent the next few days
just playing around with 4 black and 4 white threads. I switched
between different braids and thread patterns, trying out some
of my Edo Yatsu patterns on Yatsu Rai braids and vice versa.
I also did some 8-thread Kongo Gumi braiding, and
made up some new braids that I don't have names for.

This was great fun, and it also gave me a sampler I can use
to show off my craft to others. I carry this braid around in my
pocket, not just for showing off, but also because it can be
pretty handy to have a hank of cord in your pocket. I used
it multiple times on a recent vacation for holding a water
bottle or camera.

At about this time, I manged to get ahold of some gold
yarn of the same type as the blue and grey yarn I was using
earlier. I was so happy with the texture of the black and
white braids that used yarns of two different gauges, I
wanted to try a braid two wildly different gauges. I decided
to use 6 black threads and only 2 gold threads in a simple
Edo Yatsu braid. The black threads did a good job of keeping
the gold threads separate from each other in this "YB BB YB BB"
braid, creating a braid with a great knobbly texture. It's not
very long, since I started with only a yard for each thread,
as a trial. This braid will probably hold knots really well,
so I'm sure I'll do something like this again.

I was so happy with that braid, I wanted to do another.
This time, I tried a "YB YB BB BB" thread pattern while
keeping to the 6 black and 2 gold Edo Yatsu. Keeping the
two gold threads closer together gave this braid more of
a twist feeling, with the two bands of gold bound tightly
around a core of black. I started with more yarn this time,
so this braid should also be a little more useful.

The types of silk yarn I've been able to find in stores
have been really great, but finding exactly the colors I want
has been kind of a challenge. I made a guess and stopped by a
store that specializes in needlepoint supplies, and hit the
jackpot. Silk needlepoint thread is kind of expensive, but it
comes in a very nice pallette of colors and is meant to provide
fine detail.

This silk braid in my "Interlocking E" Edo Yatsu pattern
uses 4 red, 4 white strands of Silk needlepoint thread in a
"RR RW WR WW" thread pattern. The resulting braid is about
two thirds the diameter that a similar braid would be using
cotton embroidery floss. I could double or triple each
thread for a thicker braid, and the color selection should
enable me to match most fabrics or create customized braids
in somebody's personal colors, whatever they might be.

Most of my braids have been "for art's sake", with only
the vaguest idea of practical use. This one was born of use,
and designed with that in mind. I have this red/black checked
fleece jacket that I've had for about twenty years. It's holding
up pretty well, but in all those years it's never had a zipper
pull. I decided to braid a swanky zipper pull for myself, because
I knew it wouldn't take very long.

I decided to use 4 red and 4 black strands of silk needlepoint
thread. The bulk of the braid is Yatsu Rai in a "KR KR KR KR"
thread pattern to create vertical stripes, but one end is a closed
loop of Maru Yotsu braid in a "K R K R" pattern. This is accomplished
by tying the middle of the four bundled threads and doing a few
inches of Maru Yotsu, then looping the remaining threads together
and starting in on the Yatsu Rai. After a few inches of that I
switched to a half inch of Edo Yatsu to feed through the center
of some alphabet beads.

The closed loop nature of this braid will hopefully give some
people a second or two of pause, and it adds a bit of frilly
newness to this old jacket.

This braid uses cotton embroidery floss
and a 16-strand version of
the Hira Kara Gumi plaiting pattern.
There's no particular thread pattern,
but I used four different colors of brown.
The colors started in the position "1111 2222 3333 4444",
but as this was my first time with this pattern they
got pretty mixedup over the course of the braid.
I was trying to make a wider flat braid,
but instead I wound up with a thicker one.
The Hira Kara Gumi plait is an annoying one to begin with,
but doing it with twice as many threads made this braid
a long, hard slog.

The subtle variation of color is nice,
and the heaviness of this braid is great,
but Idoubt I'll try this again with some
really good reason.

So sick was I of the previous braid,
that I did another 16 strand Kongo Gumi even though
I consider this a very easy plaiting pattern to do.
This version uses that great combed silk yarn
in blue and white with gold accent strands.
I didn't want to change the thread pattern once I'd started,
but I wish I'd managed somehow to get the gold threads to
create a visual anti-spiral. Maybe next time.
I'm very happy with this braid otherwise.
It's thick (like a half inch in diameter),
soft, and slightly stretchy.

I recommend this book,
especially for beginners.
It's only 64 pages
but it's a detailed guide with lots of
color photos and step-by-step information.
This braid is short,
but it should be helpful for showing people shape variants
and figuring out thread patterns.

Of the six braids in Carey's BGB,
the most interesting new braid to me was the "flat braid".
It's fast, easy, and only as thick as the strands you use.
I didn't see any reason that the pattern couldn't be
expanded to more threads, so I decided to try 12.
The result was this "peas and carrots" colored braid.
It's still flat, and a bit wider than it would be with
just 8 strands. I bet you could do this braid with any
number of strands that is divisible by four.

The 12-strand version worked out so well,
I decided to try a 16-strand version.
I still only used a single skein of cotton embroidery floss
per color, so this braid is shorter even though it is wider.
The braiding pattern worked fine, though I had a difficult
time keeping tensions even on all the threads, so the
chevrons started to get a little lop-sided.
It was a bit crowded, even on an 11-inch marudai,
so I'm not sure I could try the 20-strand version without
a larger, or at least wider, mirror.

Checking around, I find that the most common Japanese name
used for this braid is "Hira Nami".

The first braid that I made with this silk embroidery thread was so
thin and fine, but not very useful. For this one, I doubled the threads
so that each strand of this 8-strand Edo Yatsu braid is actually two
threads. There's also an extra strand down the hollow core, to try to
beef it out a little more.

While I was braiding this, I got an invitation to a birthday party,
so I decided to give this braid away as a present. Even though it
takes time to make, I felt silly giving a hunk of string as a present
so I sewed up a little bag and used this braid as the drawstring.
Somehow that made me feel a little less weird about it.

One of the reasons I started braiding is so that I could
stop buying polyester "rat tail" cord like this every time
I needed a decorative cord. So, it's kind of sick to buy
several yards of this stuff and braid it. It makes a nice
shiny braid, but hideously expensive at several dollars a
foot just for materials. Plus, the stuff Jo-Ann sells in
their trim section is very stiff, so it doesn't even braid
very well. I did this Kusari Kaku Yatsu "square braid" out
of the BGB because it doesn't involve sharp turns.

I had signed up to teach a class in kumihimo at an SCA
event, and I wanted class attendees to be able to see my
threads even if they were kind of far back from the marudai,
so I went to the store and bought the thickest, chunkiest
yarn I could find.
I wound up with two skeins of
Wool-Ease "Thick & Quick" Acrylic/Wool Yarn
which is not the most period material,
but is certainly visible.

This is the first braid I made with the yarn,
an 8-strand braid using
the Hira Kara Gumi "rounded flat" braiding pattern.
The braid is huge and stretchy,
about 3/4 inch across the widest way.

I used a "KK KG KG GG" thread pattern to acheive
this nice zig-zag visual pattern
There's a book by Rosalie Neilson titled,
The Thirty-Seven Interlacements of Hira Kara Gumi.
Ms. Neilson determined that there are 37 different
two-color visual patterns possible with this braid,
and published a book showing each pattern with its
thread set-up.
This pattern is on the front cover of the book,
as well as page 25.
Now I have just 36 more braids to go.

I liked the doubled silk needlepoint thread,
and I liked the Hira Kara Gumi pattern,
so I decided to try combining the two.
This "KK GK GG KG" pattern is page 32 of 37IHKG,
so now I only have 35 more to go.

You may have noticed that this braid and
the two preceding braids are all black and gold.
The first two were done before the Super Bowl,
and the third was finished later.
Go Stillers! Superbowl champeens!
These are also the colors of the local SCA Barony,
coincidentally.

I was about to teach a class in kumihimo,
and dang,
I couldn't find my
BGB sampler braid anywhere.
How could I reach a class without that?
So, everything else went on hold while I braided a new one.
I decided to use the combed silk yarn again,
but make the sections longer this time,
so each of the six main sections
(Square, Round, Flat, Honeycomb, Hollow, and Rounded Flat)
is about 11 or 12 inches long.
I had some yarn left over at the end,
so I added a section of Yatsu Rai,
and a short section of one other pattern
tht I don't have a name for but that
everybody really seems to like.

The length of this combined cord makes it very useful.
It could be a tasuke sleeve cord or something like that,
so it could serve a practical purpose beyond just showing off
my braiding skills. I later found my short sampler cord after
it went through the wash. That one will live with my braiding
supplies, but this long one is a real show piece.

I was wondering how well this 40-pound test nylon line would braid.
It, like the rat-tail cord, only worked well in the Kusari Kaku Yatsu
"square braid". You can see how it pushed the polyester yarn off to the
sides, making it more like a flat braid instead of a square. It's
reasonably attractive, but its main purpose is to have an approximate
test weight capable of holding my weight, in case I ever need a braid to
save my life.

This braid is slightly more decorative than the last one,
since instead of braiding with the nylon rope,
I braided around the nylon rope.
The Edo Yatsu braiding pattern is hollow,
so it's easy to put a core of something else down the middle.
I did this once before with an extra strand of silk in
braid 28,
but this one uses a length of 40-pound test nylon line
at the core for strength.
It would be more attractive if I'd used something besides
the chunky Acrylic/Wool yarn,
because the braid completely hides the core.
You can see how using a more attractive braid around
an even stronger core would be useful for making
decorative cords that still have serious strength.

I made this braid as an example to show a class.
Also, to use up some more of this chunky yarn.
It's not very attractive.

This was the first braid for
the
class I taught at the Mi-no-Hi festival
with Sharon's help.
I wanted to start out with a simple braid
to show set-up and basic method,
and this maru yotsu pattern is the simplest I know.
I used the chunky yarn like I planned,
and the smallest of my four marudai.
We spent about an hour mostly setting everything up
(With some additional help, thanks Raven!)
before the class, but I left this one partially set up
so the students (two students, but what can you do?)
could see that part.
I wasn't able to complete this one during the class,
of course, but it survived the trip home and
was finished later.

This was actually the third braid I taught in the class,
but I completed it second.
It uses the yatsu rai pattern,
which I like to teach alongside the maru yatsu
pattern to show how a minor change in the braiding pattern
can yield a very different braid shape.
It's not in Carey's BGB,
so it also gives students a little something they can't
get elsewhere as easily.

I used a "KG KG KG KG" thread pattern,
which yields this thin stripy braid
instead of the distinctive S pattern for which
this braid is mostly known.
For the S pattern see
braid 5
and
braid 17.

This is the last demonstrator braid from the Mi-no-Hi class.
It started off as a simple edo yatsu braid in a "KG KG KG KG"
color pattern, but I decided that was boring me, so I switched
through a few color variations until I settled on a houndstooth
check pattern of "KG KK GK GG". The houndstooth check pattern is
really starting to grow on me. At first, it was the kind of thing
that pops up when you're trying to do something more interesting,
but over time I have come to appreciate it for its pleasing
staccato regularity. This is a good pattern when you really
want the colors to hang in big patches instead of thin stripes.

There was actually one more braid at the class,
but Sharon finsihed it up so I don't count it as my work.
It was a 16-strand kongou braid in red and white
acrylic yarn.I liked the way the material braided, and
now I have gigantic skeins of it, so I decided to do my
own 16-strand braid.
This one uses a braiding pattern similar to the 8 strand
Edo Yatsu, but with twice as many strands.

I started out with that nice houndstooth check pattern
(RR RR WW WW RR RR WW WW),
but somewhere in the middle it devolved into a weird hybrid
of the interlocking E pattern and the houndstooth.
Apparently with the 16 strands you can acheive some
interesting effects, but on my first full braid
in this style it was flying blind.

I've grown inured to the truth that the first time you try a
new plaiting pattern, you probably won't have the hang of it,
and will probably mess it up. I used cheap acrylic yarn for this braid
on purpose so I wouldn't be wasting good silk on my experimentation.

Somebody I know asked me
about braiding with strands of beads.
I had never tried it,
and other people have mentioned it to me in the past,
and I was walking past a bead store, and...

This braid has eight strands of tiny seed beads,
strung on "Fireline" beading cord.
It's kind of a pain to string hundreds of beads onto the line,
and a constant pain keeping the line tension good
while you're braiding,
but it makes a very shiny and sinuous piece of bling.
The tension is off in a few places,
but I'm very happy with the braid over all,
especially for a first try.

This braid is about 14" long and about 3/8" in diameter,
and uses most of two vials of beads.
I added some findings and chain to the ends of this braid
so that it would be useful as a necklace.

This is an "8 tama" braid, plaited using eight bobbins.
The four white bobbins had two strands of whote silk yarn on them,
and the four black bobbins had three strands of black silk on them.
This was an attempt to balance out the white yarn being thicker
than the black yarn. It worked, but the braid is fairly chunky.

One of these days, I should write up this plaiting pattern.
I haven't seen it in any of my books, and I may have invented it.
When I show people the sampler
braid (#18), they often remark on it.

I added some of those little rubber-ring-and-bead
thingies at the ends to make this braid useful as an
eyeglass cord. The starting end actually has the yarn
looped through the ring, so there's no way to get that
off without cutting. The other end has the yarn looped
through the ring before it's bound with the whipping.

As I mentioned above, the first time I try something new,
things often go wrong somehow, and this no longer bothers me.
However, if something goes well the first time I try it,
I usually try it a second time to demonstrate
my success is repeatable.
If nothing goes wrong the second time,
I'm a pretty happy fellow.

Once again, I made eight strands of seed beads on Fireline,
then braided them together. I started with more beads, so this
braid is about eight inches longer than the first bead braid.
I also used a different color pattern, "BB LL BB LL".
After this picture, I added some findings to turn this
braid into a necklace as well.

Took a class,
actually took a class in braiding with beads, at
a local bead store.
I knew what the standard technique was supposed to look like,
but my attempts to recreate it were awful,
so I wanted to have somebody show me what I was doing wrong.
It turns out that the main thing I was doing "wrong" was
using a marudai, as most of the techniques use a braiding disk.
So, taking the class showed I just need different techniques
or something.

The underlying braid is an 8-strand Kongo Gumi round braid
of "S-Lon" beading cord.
Four of the strands are unbeaded,
two are strung with 3 mm gold glass beads,
and two are strung with 3 mm black glass beads.
The thread pattern is "KG PP KG PP" where "P" is "plain".
The standard technique has
you only adding a bead when the strand is moving from the "2"
position down to the "5" position, but the tension on my strands
was not as great even after I upped the weight on each strand to
1.75 ounces, and I was going through cord much faster than I was
going through braids. So, I started over and added a bead every
time a beaded strand was moving. This gives my braid a double
helix instead of a single helix and inspires me to find beads
in green, cyan, silver, and tan, and encode something.

For my birthday,
my mother in law got me a set of 8 traditional kumihimo tama.
"Tama" are the weighted bobbins/spools used by serious kumihimo
braiders instead of the home-made things I was using.

They weigh about 3 ounces each,
which is four times heavier than the weights I was using.
This puts a lot more tension on the threads,
resulting in a tighter braid.
Most of the literature I've seen has this the opposite way,
so I don't quite understand,
but I'm sure I'll have plenty of experimentation.
Here's the first experiment right here:

Here's the first braid with the new tama.
I used the Hira Nami flat braid pattern
with two thick gold yarn strands
and six thin black yarn strands.
This yields a nice zig-zag pattern,
and the braid is tight enough to be somewhat positionable.

I really need to catch up on documenting stuff.
I've been posting braids to the blog here,
but I haven't updated the
Marudai page
in months.
I'm going to hold off making new braids for a bit while I get caught up,
but I still even have a backlog of braids to post here.
Today's braid is actually a st of braids.

These are six 8-tama braids,
each about three feet long.
They use the six braiding patterns
from Jacqui Carey's "Beginner's Guide to Braiding".
They all use the "WW RR WW RR" color pattern,
which makes some of the braids more interesting,
and some of them not as interesting.
All of them are braided using needlepoint silk, with
two threads on each tama.
These will probably, some day,
be donated to the Kingdom for use as award cords,
but for now they are going to be examples,
and possible part of a kumihimo A&S display.

There's also the possibility that I might be teaching
a class or two in kumihimo in the near future, if I can
work out some technical issues.
Stay tuned.

In the SCA, my "badge" is described as,
"Fieldless, on a hexagon Or a rabbit's head cabossed sable".
That's a fancy way of saying "A black bunny's head on a gold hexagon".
That's a cute way of creating a "Honey Bunny" image.
It's suitably Japanese, yet it can be expressed in Western terms,
so I think it should be a good SCA badge.
So far it's passed the Kingdom Heralds,
maybe by Pennsic I'll be able to use it without worrying.

Another tradition is for artists and craftspeople to put items
on display at events so others can see what kinds of things people
are doing. Sometimes, this display is part of a judged competition,
but sometimes it is simply a non-competitive display. In most cases,
viewers will often leave "tokens" at displays they particularly
enjoy. This is just meant as a "tip o' the hat" to the artisan
for a work well executed.

So these are my new tokens.
I've painted black bunny heads on nine brass hexagons,
and attached short lengths of braid to each.
The braid is an 8-strand Edo Yatsu braid with a nice
"interlocking E" pattern in black and yellow cotton.
The bunny was simply stencilled onto 1 inch wide brass strip,
which I then cut into hexagons and drilled for the cord.

If you're an artisan or craftsperson in the SCA,
and if I leave one of these tokens at one of your displays,
please consider it an invitation to hunt me out at some point
and talk to me about your work.

Looks like I'm going to wind up making a bunch of these, as I keep
giving them away as presents.

Once again, these are eight strands of glass seed beads on Fireline,
braided with the edo yatsu braiding pattern. This time I used the
"Interlocking E" color pattern (XX XO OX OO), which makes it very
difficult to see what the actual pattern is in this braid. I think
that's kind of neat. These colors together make this braid very
warm.

Here's a braid I made with
my heavy 3 ounce tama
on one of the best of the second batch of marudai.

This braid uses eight strands of combed silk yarn, 4 blue and 4 gold.
As a little stylistic flourish, I braided the cords together in a
4-strand maru yotsu braid before doubling them over, so the braid
has a braided loop at the starting end. The bulk of the braid uses the
yatsu rai pattern, which I think is just a special name you use
for yatsu sen when it makes this "S" pattern.

It's a pity we usually associate these colors so strongly with the
Cub Scouts, since they go very well together.

This bead braid is braided using a "Houndstooth Check" color pattern
on the edo yatsu. See what I'm saying about the great patches of color
this produces? You can also really see the colors travelling back and
forth through the braid.

I also figured out why the tension is a little uneven on these bead
braids. The start of the braid is always very tight, but it loosens up
over the course of the braid. The reason is that the beaded strands have
significant weight, which shifts from the outside to the inside while
the strands get shorter and the braid gets longer. I need to start
changing the weights as I braid, maybe starting with 3/4 ounce weights on
the strands and switching to 1 ounce weights later on.

Here's a silk braid I did in brown and dark brown, using the hira
nami flat braiding pattern and my second batch of tama

Instead of using yarn of multi-stranded floss for this braid, I
actually did it more traditionally by buying a spool of silk thread and
creating 8 strands of warp warp from 40 threads each of two different
colors. Fun, but just as expensive as buying silk needlepoint thread,
which is thicker to begin with and available in more colors.

I seem to have worked out most of the bugs in my bead braiding
process. This braid is nearly perfect, if you ask me. It uses these
great matte-finsih glass beads in black and metallic gold. Nearly
everybody who sees this braid in person says , "Wow."

I used the edo yatsu round braiding pattern, like I normally do for
these bead braids, with a simple "XO XO XO XO" color pattern. Instead of
metal end caps, I made short loops of beaded Fireline at the ends to hold
the toggle clasp.

I wanted to make a bead braid that combined the colors of red wine
and white wine, but when you're looking at the tubes of seed beads at
the bead store, it's difficult to tell how the beads will actually look
once they're strung and braided. I think I got the right color beads for
the 'white wine' part of this, but the 'red wine' beads are a bit too
orange/brown, so together the colors look less like a wine flight and
more like a rootbeer float. It's still pretty, and I like rootbeer
floats, it's just not what I was actually going for.

Back when I wasn't working, I hatched the idea of teaching kumihimo
classes to earn some money. There was some interest, and a few places
invited me to submit class proposals. This pointed out to me that I
didn't have any paperwork, and that if I wanted to take this idea
seriously I should really put some together. I was going to need some
curricula, background materials, and definitely some handouts.

It didn't take me too long to put the handouts together, but
something was missing from them. They really needed some pictures of
exemplary braids to go along with each set of instructions. I had plenty
of braids, but only a few designed to be good examples for photocopied
handouts.

Luckily, I had plenty of black and white silk yarn, and a scanner.
The next batch of braids was all about making good pictures for the
handouts.

The maru yotsu braid only has four strands, so I used
double the amount of yarn to beef it up for the pictures.
Each white "strand" is 4 strands, each black "strand" is 8.
It's as wide as the 16-strand braid below!

The 16-strand kongou isn't more difficult than the
8-strand that most people teach, but it's capable of my greater
detail, so I wanted to include it. It also gave me a chance to
use all 16 of my home made tama at once.

I started this braid with the intention of letting other people try
out braiding, but then kind of got embroiled in it and wound up powering
through to the finish. It's a flat yatsu sen braid made with red and
white polyester yarn. I started with a "RR WW RR WW" pattern that should have made
diagonal stripes, but at some point I let my running commentary to
"students" distract me from where I was in the braiding. The strip
pattern somehow got reversed! I was so intrigued by that that I decided
to try and do it on purpose. I succeeded! So, I then spent the rest of
the braid switching the stripes back and forth every six inches or so.
This braid wound up holding one of the hanging lanterns that adorned the
clan gate.

One of the things that's much easier to get at Pennsic
than anywhere else I normally go is leather lacing.
I went to
Spotted Pony Traders
and bought four 72" laces made from what must be deerskin or calfskin leather
since it's soft "like buttah" to make this braid.
I started out doing a 4-strand braid to make the loop in the center.
It was a royal pain to keep the laces from flipping around while braiding.
Once I switched to the 8-strand edo yatsu to complete the braid,
it became much easier to keep the laces flat while braiding,
so the exterior is entirely the smooth side of the laces.

I liked braiding the leather laces so much that upon finishing
Braid 59 I went straight back to the merchant and bought eight more
laces.

This braid also uses the edo yatsu pattern,
but a different color
arrangement creates the interlocking E pattern that I like.
I'm not sure what this braid would be good for,
but it was a fun experiment in materials.
It is not a whip.

Started braiding this
hira nami braid before Pennsic, actually, but wound up
having to cut it off for travel, then restart it at Pennsic and take
most of the rest of the week just finishing it.
I used a "BBBB WWWW" color pattern to create chevrons
to match the badges.

I also made a bunch of leather diamonds
displaying the badge of our household ("One Knight Inne"), and this braid
wound up getting chopped into shorter sections so we can wear these as
household tokens. Our household, led by
Sir Maughnus
has existed for a dozen years and 13 Pennsics,
which is pretty special.
This years is also the 20th anniversary of Sir Maughnus' knighting,
so these tokens were also a gift to him.

I'm still looking for the best flat braid to use for lacing type purposes.
Previously, I'd settled on the hira nami "flat waves" braid as a nice
flat and wide braid that was easy to produce with eight bobbins.
However, Sharon recently gave me a copy of
Jacqui Carey's book, Creative Kumihimo,
which has a flat braid type I'd never tried.
Carey labels it "8G", but checking around I find that others call it
the Shige Uchi "luxurious" braid.

Shige Uchi is essentially the same braid as the
edo yatsu hollow braid,
but instead of the threads crossing over at the top
to make a round braid, they reverse direction!
This "unzips" the round braid into a flat braid
with a little bit of cupping to it.

As is usual for me with a new braid, I messed up a bit.
First, I got a couple of threads crossed, changing the color
pattern, and then later I accidentally switched back to the
familiar edo yatsu pattern. I managed to unbraid all
that, but just couldn't get the shige uchi running again.
Instead, I switched through
hira nami,
yatsu sen, and
hira kara
patterns so that I could compare finished widths.
My previous choice for wide, flat braid has been
hira nami, but this braid is just a little bit wider.
If I can just do better following the pattern

More experimenting with the 8G Shige Uchi luxurious braid.
This time, I used a "WK KK KR WR" color pattern,
doubling the yarn for a wider, thicker braid.
This braid is very wide and thick,
and super soft from the great bamboo/silk yarn I used,
but very short.
A nice experiment, though, and I don't think I messed
up the pattern at all.

Finally, we get to the heart of the matter.
My experiments to find a wide and flat braid were
centered around the lacing used to make Japanese armor.
Not that I'm likely to make armor any time soon,
but the question does come up occasionally of
"what's the best braid to use for armor?"
In my opinion, it's this one.

This shige uchi braid is fast to braid,
and is the widest 8-strand braid I've been able to find.
I did this braid all in red silk thread that I bought from
a mail-order place in Japan. The thread came in a big skein
like yarn does, and I measured it out on traditional-style
bodai warping posts. This meant wrapping the thread
back and forth between vertical rods to build up a bundle
wide enough for braiding. Each strand of the braid has
40 threads in it! Yet, the completed braid is only about
a quarter inch wide.

Based on the rough estimate of 100 yards of braid in
a typical suit of armor, I'd need to get eight or nine more
skeins of thread to make enough braid for armor. I'd also
need to spend about a year braiding it since all the braids
I've made in the past year of braiding add up to about 316
feet of braid. Like I said, not very likely to be done soon.

Since I had such good luck with that
Shige Uchi braid I found in
Jacqui Carey's book, Creative Kumihimo,
I decided to go digging through it for a new
braid to try with no ulterior motive.
This braid is 8N, and the best name I can find for it is
Yatsu Nishiki.

The drawings in the book make this braid look more like
a chain of interlocking links, but really its'not very
chain like. I used a "WW RR WW RR" color pattern hoping to
get a red and white chain out of it. I got a nice looking
braid, but it doesn't look like a chain to me.

This braid is one of the most labor intensive I've ever done.
It's an eight strand braid, but it has eight moves in the pattern,
instead of the more common four moves. Nevertheless, it's a fast
braid to make. I made this whole braid in the down time of a
single day-long SCA event.

It's been a while since I've done one of these bead braids,
but I still had two full sets of beads left over in my box
of beading supplies. The last beaded necklace I did in black
and gold came out so well, that I decided to do a new one,
but this time in glossy translucent beads instead of matte
opaque beads. I used the same "houndstooth check" color
pattern of "BG GG GB BB" with the edo yatsu braiding patterm
that I used for this other braid to create those large areas
of solid color.

The tension on this braid seemed really strange, but maybe
it was just that I was out of practice in this type of
braiding. I'm happy with the way the braid came out and will
probably wind up giving this one as a gift.

A bit of retrospection is followed by full-tilt progressive
action. Lamenting my inexperience with 16-strands braids, I
dove head-first into this great braid that also includes a
brand new material.

The material is a hemp yarn. Hemp is a traditional Japanese
fiber, so I wanted to try it out. I really like the royal
blue hue of the blue yarn, but after I got the white yarn
home I realize I had just bought a skein of string. It's the
nicest string I've ever had, but it's basically string in
color and texture. It braids really well, though. It isn't
very stretchy, but it bends nicely and makes strongly defined
"stitches" in the braid.

The braid is braid 16P from Jacqui Carey's book, Creative Kumihimo,
and is essentially two overlapping edo yatsu braids.
I did one braid all in blue and one braid all in white so I
could keep them straight easily, but in the last couple of
inches I switched the color pattern as an experiment and may
do a whole braid that way. Basically you do one braid for
four steps, then the other braid for four steps. This creates
a tight braid at the center with large looping stitches on
the exterior. The braid is solid underneath and knobbly on
the outside. It seems very strong, too.

A braid I started at the 2009 "Agincourt" SCA event,
this was just a method to keep me busy for an afternoon.
I started with only about six feet of yarn on each bobbin,
hoping to get a braid about three feet long so I could donate
it as an award cord while I was standing in the house of
the Baron and Baroness.
I probably could have finished it before the end of the day,
but we were told that court was starting any minute,
so I packed things away.
Of course, court wasn't starting for an hour.

Anyway, this is more of the shige uchi braid,
made with one strand of thick gold yarn per gold bobbin,
and two strands of thin black yarn per black bobbin.
I tried out a new color pattern to try to get something
pretty out of this braid, but given the woven nature of
this braid it's really difficult. It should make a nice
cord anyway, given the soft materials.

Wanted to try the 16 strand version of the edo yatsu
again, and wanted to try out this stringy hemp yarn again, so
it was time for this braid. The weave came out really uneven.
Maybe the yarn is too stiff for this braid?

The braid is aggressively hollow, though. If you push a
length together and untwist a little, the whole weave opens
up like basketry. The stiffness of the yarn keeps the braid
mostly ound, but it collapses if you push on it. If I did
this braid again but with a brightly colored core, I bet
the pressure from the inside would even out the weave a bit,
and it would be quite eye-catching.

Another bead braid to probably give away as a present.
I have four of these "in stock" right now, but will most likely
give away three of them before the end of the year.
This one uses Blue beads and aqua beads in a spiral pattern
edo yatsu braid. For some reason, this one came out
very stiff, probably not enough weight in the counterweight.

The blue beads are really very interesting.
Most of the seed beads have a silvery coating on the inside
tht makes them sparkle.
The aqua beads are like that.
These blue beads have a green coating on the inside
that gives them a color that gets darker as you look into them,
much like deep seawater.
This is a very watery braid.

Here's a tight square (Carey Creative Kumihimo 8H) braid
made using some silk thread I bought at Pennsic. Each strand is 24 threads,
meaning there is a heck of a lot of thread in this braid. The tightness
of this braid makes it only about a quarter inch across, though. In the
picture, I've tied the braid into a decorative Chinese luck knot.

More exercise with the shige uchi (CK8G) braid.
I was wondering how this braid would actually look with
two strands white and six red. The book has nice diagrams
to help you plan, but as with most things, the plan and
the reality often come out very different. This one's nice,
and as far as I know there are no errors or tension problems
anywhere in this braid.

For making my bead braids (Braids
39,
41,
46,
48,
51,
52, and
66),
the part that takes the most time
is stringing the hundreds and hundreds
of tiny seed beads onto the line.
People have been telling me for months that I need
a "bead spinner", but since those things cost real
money while a simple needle costs just a dollar,
I have resisted.

Then, the craft store gave me a "40% off any single item"
coupon, and the spinners really only cost $15,
so I bought one of these
Spin-n-Bead
spinners. I bought the "Junior" model.

It is totally worth it.
It cuts stringing time in half.
If I'd spent the money sooner,
I would have saved more than eight hours
worth of my time.
The last 150 beads or so still have to go on by hand,
but most of them just fly up the needle.
It's amazing.
If you do this kind of bead stringing,
I totally recommend that you get a bead spinner.
This Junior model is big enough to hold a full tube of the beads I use,
so I don't know if the larger spinner is necessary.

This braid is made from two skeins of cotton embroidery floss.
I doubled the floss to make the braid a little thicker and shorter.
If you compare it to the beaded
braid 74,
you can see I was trying to compare the two materials.
I used the same edo yatsu braiding pattern
and the same color pattern.
The two braids even came out almost the same length!

I think that doubling two skeins like this makes a nice
thick braid that would be good for turning a large bead
into a neckalce. You could pick two colors that match the
bead and have a nice piece without much fuss.
If I teach classes at a bead store, I think I'll focus
on making braids that are about like this one.

Getting a little tired of the edo yatsu,
I decided to experiment with braiding beaded strands using
the kongou gumi braid.
I like the way it came out,
the way the strands all spiral in the same direction.
Kongou gumi uses up a lot of material,
so this braid is a little shorter than normal, though.

Moving slightly flatter,
I went for the hira kara gumi braid which Jacqui Carey
describes as "rounded flat".
This was a little weird, but it came out nicer than I feared it might.
I love this orange color with the silver-lined beads,
and pairing them with the green transparent beads makes a nice contrast.

I used the 100% "string" yarn that I've used
a few times before,
and the square 8H braid from
Jacqui Carey's Creative Kumihimo
that I've used once before.
I used my heaviest tama to pull this stiff yarn into line,
which worked very well with this tight braid.
To get the alternating stripes,
it really was just a matter of making the odd and even threads
the two colors I wanted.

The braid for most of this is just a simple 8 strand edo yatsu, but I
had 16 strands of yarn on the marudai. Half of the threads are always in
the center of the hollow braid, and thus are not visible. At first, I
just alternated between the red and white threads. Then, I gradually
phased in the red threads one by one, then back out again. I did some
more alternating, then finished up with a 16 strand braid I've been
wanting to try.

Combed silk yarn, doubled
Keiruko no himo, which is Carey CK16T
Rings pattern
RWWR RWWR RWWR RWWR
Wanted to do a whole braid with this pattern.

I wanted to try the
keiruko no himo
braid from the end of braid number 82 again,
plus I got this new silk yarn.

First of all, this yarn isn't anything like the silk yarn I used
way back when. The fibers are much shorter, so when the tama
cause it to un-twist the yarn just frays apart. I used two pieces
of yarn in each strand so that it wouldn't un-twist. Combined with
the 16 strands of the braiding pattern this is one heavy braid.
I managed to find this braid in Jacqui Carey's Creative
Kumihimo as 16T. She points out that although the movements
are a lot like the edo yatsu braid (CK8F), it has a twill
pattern more like the square braid (CK8H).

After the difficulties I had with that other yarn,
I decided to do another braid with the Maju Silk yarn
I enjoyed so much in the past. It was a good excuse to
try a new braid, so I pulled out my Creative Kumihimo
and picked this 16 strand flat braid.

This braid is about four feet long and about an inch wide.
It uses CK16X, which makes this nice, wide, heavy, stretchy braid.
It's a fast braid, and I'm sure I'll use it again.
I didn't have any problem with single strands of this yarn
fraying apart, so I'm fairly certain the other yarn just
uses cheaper short fibers.

Another bead braid, but I tried the square kaku yatsu
pattern and wound up with this wonderful necklace. It came out
just amazingly sinuous, almost like one of those tight chains.
These two colors turned out to go amazingly well together, too.
They remind me of the little crocus flowers that poke up as
soon as the snow finishes melting in the spring.

It's another CK16X braid like
braid 84,
but using different silk yarn
and a "WBBW WBWB BWWB BWBW" collor pattern.
I started with 6 feet of yarn,
and ended up with 4'4" of 3/4"-side braid.

I really like this braiding pattern.
There's only one crossover,
and the rest of the movements are easy to keep track of.
Even though it has 16 strands,
there are still only
four moves per iteration,
so it's not much more difficult than
an 8-strand braid.

Here's the braid I did on Saturday in the workshop led by
Rodrick Owen.
It's a 16-tama braid, with each tama holding a doubled-strand of
cotton embroidery floss.

The braid starts off with a true blunt end,
and progresses with a square braid.
Mr. Owen taught me this braid off the cuff,
but it s a 16-tama variation on CK8D.
Then, it switches to a 16-tama chevron braid
that he is thinking of putting in his next book.
After that, it switches back and forth between the
chevron braid and a reverse-chevron braid to create
the diamond pattern.
This braid took me all day,
and it is full of awful errors.
The last two iterations even get some of the thread
order wrong so that the braid inverts front and back
for the last few inches.
Yuck.
That's why it's called a workshop,
though, I guess.
If everything went well it would be a funshop.

Here's the braid I did on Sunday in the workshop led by
Rodrick Owen.
It's a 24-tama braid, with each tama holding a doubled-strand of
cotton embroidery floss.

This braid is from Makiko Tada's book,
"Kumihimo: The Essence of Japanese Braiding",
where it's on page 36.
I don't own 24 matching tama,
so I had to borrow some from the Tracy,
the owner of the store where the wokshop was held,
The Lacemaker.
This braid basically took me all day.
It only has a few minor errors in it.

Each full iteration of the braid has 68 individual steps,
though some of those are repeast of earlier steps.
I tried to use embroidery floss that was nearly the same
color as the illustration, but my selection was limited.
I'm sure with some more carefully-chosen colors it would
not be as garish.

This pattern has a great 3D texture,
and an interesting color pattern.
It uses a lot of material, though.
I started with more than a yard of floss on each bobbin,
but the finished braid is only about 18 inches long!

I finished the braid off by pairing up the colors
and making smaller 4-tama braids with them.
This is challenging, since you're trying to work
six individual braids on top of each other.
It's a lot fancier than just gathering all the threads
into a single tassel, though.

So, I really liked the braiding pattern for
braid 87,
but I didn't feel that I'd gotten enough experience
with it in the workshop, or that I'd used materials
that really did it justice.

In addition, I doubled the steps of the pattern,
creating this 'doubled diamond' braid.
The thread is silk thread I bought at the Lacemaker,
bundled to 20 threads per strand.
There are 16 strands in the braid,
though it's very thick so it's only about a half inch wide.
I started with 12 feet of thread on each tama,
so the braid is 7 feet 8 inches long.
I think I have have plenty of experience with
this braiding pattern now.
It's a bit difficult getting the tension right,
but it's just beautiful.

16 ends of silk thread per strand
Yatsu Sen
Winding Streams
WD LM WD LM
Using up extra silk with an old favorite

This braid has eight strands braided in the yatsu sen flat braid
pattern of eight strands. Each strand of the braid has 16 threads in it.
If I'd used this silk in braid 90, it would have had 24 threads per
strand instead of just 20. Having only two strands of each color in this
braid gives it a nice pebbly pattern. I started with six feet of thread
on each bobbin, and the finished braid is about four feet long. You'll
also note is has a true blunt end at the start, another trick I learned
from Rodrick Owen.

Why? Because I was wondering how it would come out. As it happens, I
think it's kinda nice. This square braid is very tight, so it curves the
wires nicely. The structure of the braid really stands out, and the
colors are sharp. The modular plug is glued on, not crimped.

This bead braid is meant to replace the
Amethyst Kongou Gumi
bead braid in my "stock" pile,
which I gave as a birthday present to a good friend.
It uses an 8-strand kongou gumi spiralling pattern,
which works very well for bead braiding,
and is a nice fast and tight braid in general.
In the photo, you can't really see the irridescence on
both the white and blue beads.
Plus the ble beads are really much brighter with
some light behind them.

I started this braid so that I could show people at a demo
what a braid in progress looks like, and let them try out
braiding on the marudai.

As a result, there's an error in there that changes the pattern
about halfway through. I can't honestly say if they made the error
or if I did, but I'll take responsibility because I didn't unbraid
it to remove the error.

The braid istself is the
Creative Kumihimo 8H braid I like so much,
done up in bamboo/silk yarn,
It's only a couple of feet long.

I chose this braid because the movements are
identical to a longer braid I'm (still) working on.
The braid in progress has 17 strands instead of just 8, though.
The 17th strand causes the braid to be a wide, flat braid,
though it mintains the twill structure.

One of the younger people in camp at Pennsic this year
became interested in the braiding that Sharon and I were doing,
and started asking us questions. One series of questions was
about the difficulty of various types of braids, and I took
the opportunity to toss out a zen parable that you'll inevitably
hear if you start studying kumihimo.

The student asked the master,
"Master, what is the most difficult braid?"
The master responded,
"The most difficult braid is a 3-strand braid, done perfectly."

One point of that parable is of course
that it is most difficult to take care with a task you find trivial,
but this student had trouble with it because turned out he'd never
done a standard 3-strand braid in his life.
I cut off some yarn for him to try,
but pretty soon a bunch of us were trying it.
I guess it's been at least twenty years since I did this kind of braid.
As you can see above, it really is quite difficult to get perfect.

In April 2010, when Sharon and I took a class with Rodrick Owen,
I asked him what marudai braid he thought best approximated the type
of braids used in Japanese armor. In June, he sent me a pattern for
imitating a twill takadai braid on the marudai. I started it soon after,
and I finished it up in October.

Yes, I braided this braid (on and off) for five months.
It is almost 21 feet long.
The braid is a 17 strand braid with a twill structure.
I used cotton embroidery floss,
in three different colors of brown.
I had originally set up the marudai to do a very fast 16 strand braid,
but when Mr. Owen sent me this pattern I added one more strand and got
going. Wow, now I have a lot of it.
I think I have a use for about 12 or 14 feet of it.

The braiding pattern is actually quite simple,
much like the square braid pattern I used for braids like
braid 93,
but the 17th strand allows the braid to open flat.
It really should not have taken me this long to complete
even this much braid, but I was only working on it
part time, and actually did some other braids in between.

I later wound up cutting this braid into three pieces,
and using two of them as sleeve lacing in a green linen
suikan.

This is more experimentation with cotton crochet thread.
I'm not sure I like what it does in a shige uchi braid,
the tensions are all wrong and the pattern,
which should be nice,
gets covered up in places.
I don't think this thread is flexible enough for this braid.
It should work well for some other braids, though.
I just have to find out what those braids are.

p>I decided to try out Makiko Tada's sawagata gumi using
some nice silk yarn I picked up while on vacation in November.
The yarn is great.
It's more of the "Mulberry Silk" brand I've used before and enjoyed.
The braid is a 24-strand monstrosity with five pages of instructions.
Unfortunately, those instructions don't actually illustrate
all of the movements you're supposed to make.
So OK, to begin with it's not right.
Next, I did it in installments over the course of three SCA events
and four weekends. There are a number of errors.
It's difficult to keep track of where you are in five pages of
instructions when you're talking to people and packing it up for
a week in between sessions.
Anyway, so like normal my first try at something isn't perfect.
You kind of have to know what you're looking at to know that,
so it doesn't bother me too much.

I made this fancy kariginu
robe and although I dind't have the time or motivation to make
the six yards of lacing needed for the sleeves, I did manage to
amke a couple of feet of thick silk braid to make the frog
closure at the neck.

This is an awesome braid, and I'm glad I finally tried it out.
I used four threads of cotton crochet thread per strand,
so this braid came out nice and hefty.
The hira yatsu braid is not as flat as the
yatsu sen or
hira nami braids.
It is much more rectangular in cross-section.
Much like the
kaku yatsu square braid,
it's easy to get vertical stripes running down the braid,
and easy to get "rings" or "waves" by using a different
arrangement of starting threads.

One of the reasons I took so long to try this braid
is that the instructions I have for it make it seem difficult.
It's really very easy and fast.

We use the
"water karabitsu" quite a bit
during the year to haul feast gear and other items to SCA events.
As a consequence the decorative cords I bought for it were getting
a bit ratty. Luckily, I now know how to make nicer ones.

Both of these are made with a chunky acrylic yarn,
so they won't mind getting wet, and are nice and soft.
The rectangular braid uses that
hira yatsu
pattern.

After threatening to do this for several years,
I actually got around to braiding some paracord.
"Parachute Cord" typically has a test weight of 550 pounds,
so this 8-strand kaku yatsu braid has a total test weight
of around two tons. That should be strong enough to lift the
win karabitsu, I should think.

Sharon and I taught another kumihimo class,
this time at Aethelmearc War Practice.
I only taught two braids, kaku yatsu and hira kara gumi.
Over the course of that weekend,
I actually wound up making three braids of kaku yatsu
to use up the material I had prepared for class.
All three of these are in cotton crochet thread,
either three or four threads per strand.

The first one, I wound up gifting to Sir Ogami Akira
to use as a chin strap for his hat.
He says it's very comfy.

I say "perhaps" above, but I knew when I braided this
that I wanted to use it for the ties and kotsuyu
on my Suoh Sugata project.
I also used braid 102, though I cannot
remember which was the one that I cut into pieces.

Sageo cords are the cords used to secure the scabbard (saya) of
Japanese swords into the waistband of your garment. Looking at
photographs, it always seemed like the braids had nine strands, so it
took me a while to figure out how to do a flat braid with nine strands.
It's essentially the same square braid pattern I used for
braid 96 and
other braids, but the ninth strand opens up the braid to create a flat
braid with the same twill structure.

The material is an intersting embroidery thread that a friend of mine
bought off ebay but didn't like. It says "silk" on the package, but the
Internet tells me it's actually rayon. It looks good and braids well, so
I'm sure I'll find a use for it in future braids.

I realized that I still had a bunch of this great silk yarn from
"Mulberry Silk", so I decided to do another sageo braid, this time in
real silk. Since the yarn is thicker, I only had to use two plies of
yarn per strand.

This braid uses combed silk yarn from "Mulberry Silk" in Rodrick
Owen's "Taka on Maru" 17-strand braid. Four red strands twine through 13
white strands. This is the same braid I used for
braid 95,
but with the higher contrast colors you can see the structure of the
braid a little better.

I wanted to make a gift braid for somebody in SCA's West Kingdom, so
I decided to do a silk braid in their kingdom colors of green and gold.
I thought this first one
came out a little thin with just two plies of yarn per strand.

I still have a bunch of the cheap silk yarn that I used for braid 83,
so I decided to use a bunch of it up. It's not as smooth as the other
silk, it is much fuzzier, so it doesn't make smooth braids. Also, the
fibers are shorter so you have to double it up or it untwists and falls
apart.

Anyway, I expanded the hira nami braid out to 16 strands, as I
haven't done since braid 27.
This is actually in Jacqui Carey's Creative
Kumihimo as braid 16L, but it's such a straightforward braid that if you
know the 8 strand "Flat Braid" from Carey's beginner book, you can
figure it out.

2 plies of crappy silk yarn per strand
CK16J
Stripes and dots
WWWRRR RR RRRWWW WW
Not sure I like this braid. It's really more of a weave.

This braid has 16 strands of that cheapo silk yarn again. The structure
of this braid is almost a weave; 12 strands go back and forth on the
faces, while four strands switch side to side. With the material and
weight I used, this makes a heavy silk braid pretty quickly. The
fanciest thing I did here was make the braided fringes at both ends.

2 plies of cotton crochet thread per strand
CK16T
One of many houndstooth variations of this braid
KKKK YYYY YYYY KKKK
Second time trying this braid on this scale

At a recent event, I noticed that the braid I use for the chin strap
of my hat was incredibly grimy. A couple of years of use will no doubt
do that. I resolved to get a nice, soft braid done by Pennsic for this
purpose, and here is what I wound up with. It's a heavy 16 strand round
braid that is kind of like two 8 strand braids done on top of each
other. I haven't really done this braid since
braid 83.
It's hollow, so it squishes nicely and stays tied. I made an error part
way in that switches the direction of the houndstooth checks. I tried
unbraiding to remove the error, but I just couldn't get it.

I did this braid on Saturday night while waiting for Sharon to pick
her mom up from the airport. I was going to do this as a black and
yellow braid, but I got carried away measuring out the yellow cotton
crochet thread and decided to just do that by itself. It's just a simple
8 strand edo yatsu braid.

Gave this away to a kumihimo teacher at Pennsic
before I thought to get a picture of it.
It is a braid much like Braid 110,
only in black and gold instead of red and white.
The teacher gave a great class on the history of Kumihimo,
including when different styles of braiding were developed.
(Pennsic 40-2)

These next two braids were done as part of "Narrow Wares Day" demos on
Artisan's Row. We had a bunch of people doing card weaving, whipcording,
marudai kumihimo, takadai kumihimo, and the like all day in one of the
tents of Pennsic University. I did these two braids because the edo
yatsu and yatsu sen braids are so similar in braiding pattern, but
produce different shapes. I let people try braiding, but I wound up
doing most of them myself.

I decided to do this chunky flat braid mostly during Fujinami no
Kaede's class. Each strand of this 8 strand yatsu rai braid has four
plies of cotton crochet thread in it, so it's fairly heavy. It's not
very smooth, but the S pattern is very distinct.

This is another 9 strand "true" shige uchi flat braid, but instead of
the color pattern that's common with sageo cords, this one starts the
contrasting threads at opposite edges of the braid and has them cross
back and forth over each other. I think this might be the braid that I
have often seen used to support calligraphy scrolls hanging in museums,
but I have not been able to get up close enough to one to be sure.
Normally, the scrolls are behind glass and the cords are nine feet off
the ground.

I wanted to do a full exploration of all of the possible color
patterns of the 8-strand edo yatsu braid. I tried to do them all in
similar colors, and identical materials, so that you could actually
compare them.

Well OK, so I ran out of yellow thread, and the new thread was a
different shade of yellow, and the new thread was a different size, and
the tama I used are too light, and the multiple plies of thread made the
braid uneven, and I'm not really happy. I put rings at one end, and
flattened rings at the other to make simple toggle clasps.

Most of my work is kind of short.
I start out with 56 inches of material
because that's a convenient length to measure out for me,
and the braid comes out 36 to 45 inches long (depending on the braid).
This one's a double-length of material.

I was preparing to teach a class on this braid,
but many of the tama I have are only about one ounce,
so you can't use them to braid lots of material.
I tried out making a somewhat light version of this braid with the light tama,
and it came out OK.
It came out way too long for beginners to finish in one day, though,
so when I taught the class I wound up using half-lengths of material.

3 plies of cotton crochet thread per strand
True shige uchi
WRK KR RK WW
Want to try this in three colors. I really like it this way.

One interesting thing about this being a 9-strand braid
is that it can handle three colors evenly.
It took some figuring to get the colors in the right places at the start,
but I managed to work it out and I really like the result.
This will come in handy, I'm sure.

I had given away most of the bead braids I made in 2010,
so my "stock" was running pretty low.
I bought a bunch of beads in the spring,
but I was too busy doing other things to make braids with them.
That problem, at least, was solved by this next stretch of braids.

I'd been wanting to make a bunch of medallions cords
for the local SCA kingdom, and I'd been wanting to work
my way through
all 13 of the 8-strand braids in Jacqui Carey's book,
"Creative Kumihimo",
so I decided to combine these two missions.
Some of those braids I had done a dozen or more times
(probably 6 dozen for 8K), but at least one of them I had only done
once before, and maybe two of them never before.
It was fun to work my way through all 13 of these braids
(in order, naturally),
and instructive in a Mr. Miyagi kind of way.

Braid 8C is the only 8-strand braid in
Jacqui Carey's Creative Kumihimo
that is not expanded to 16-strands,
so I figured out
what I thought that should look like
and tried it out.
This braid sat on my marudai languishing for weeks
until it suffered an unfortunate occurrence and I declared
it complete at this short length.